


left behind

by yikeshyuck



Series: struggles - skz fics [1]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Han Jisung | Han & Lee Felix are Best Friends, Han Jisung | Han-centric, Hurt/Comfort, Not Beta Read, We Die Like Men, its always sad boi hours, jisung sad boi hours, minho is a good boyfie, minsung for a short second, whomst is a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23296309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikeshyuck/pseuds/yikeshyuck
Summary: jisung had felt like a part of the group...until he didn't.
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han & Everyone, Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Series: struggles - skz fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1675363
Comments: 1
Kudos: 201





	left behind

**Author's Note:**

> hey!
> 
> this is the first fic i've written in a while and i hope it's not too bad (:
> 
> ☆TRIGGER WARNING☆  
> -self harm  
> -self worth issues  
> -head voices

though jisung could be seen as the moodmaker of stray kids on camera, behind the scenes he was a completely different person. when offscreen, his bright and bubbly persona had regressed into a shadow of itself and left just jisung; a shy yet helpful boy. however, there were some days where he’d feel as if he was never meant to be a part of this rag-tag group of boys in the first place and that they’d be better off without him.

these days were becoming more frequent in jisung’s life and now that promotions had ended, he had more time to think and more time to think leading to more time to doubt his position in the group. these thoughts were encouraged by small incidents which happened in the boys’ dorm life that had made him feel as if he’d been collectively outcasted from the group and thus began the voices.

they’d started harassing jisung first after a film night stray kids had a few weeks back:

☆-☆-☆-☆-☆

“who’s turn is it to choose the film?” chan’s voice soars above the raucous that the rest of the boys were making. jisung smiled: it was his turn to pick.

“mine,” jisung says, yet his voice isn’t loud enough to be heard among the chaos.

“channie hyung, pass me the remote!” jeongin squeals, not hesitating to seize the opportunity of nobody supposedly putting their film of choice on. chan surveys the room once again and everyone seems to agree with jeongin to let him have the remote. too bad he wasn’t looking in jisung’s direction as the boy had begun to curl himself up into a ball and bury his face into his knees.

chan plops himself onto the sofa and after finally noticing jisung’s presence in the room, simply asks: “jisung, you ok?”.

the younger of the two looks up and he’s lucky that the room is dark so his leader can’t see the redness of his eyes. he gives a weak smile and a nod before getting up off the sofa and trudging to the bathroom and locking the door, just before the dams behind his eyes break.

he knows crying over something so trivial like who gets to pick the film is a petty thing to do, but his brain has magnified this situation out of hand and has now fully convinced him that he isn’t cared about in the group and that his voice isn’t heard.

that’s when the new voices appeared.

menacing echoes of what sounded like a twisted version of his members’ voices flooded jisung’s mind and filled his thoughts with negativity and dread.

‘you’re not needed there’

‘you’re too weak to even stand up for yourself’

‘you’re such a baby crying over these things’

‘you’ll never be good enough for them’

☆-☆-☆-☆-☆

fast forward to a few weeks later and he hadn’t heard from the voices since that night. he thought it was just a one off thing and that he’d just be able to carry on with his life like he usually did; smiling and doing his part around the dorm where needed be. however, stray kids were fast approaching promotion time. promotion time meant longer hours in the practice room, more time spent producing in the studio and an increase in arguments between the group.

this promotion season was no exception.

chan was overworked, changbin was writing and re-writing more songs that jisung had ever seen him produce in such a short amount of time, the maknaes were on edge and homesick, minho and hyunjin were always one second away from snapping at someone and now with woojin not around to care for them, where did that leave jisung?

alone with the voices.

they’d manifested themselves deep in jisung’s psyche and came back more menacing than they ever had been. whenever jisung sat down at his desk in the studio, they’d always make him doubt all his work and added another ball of paper into the overflowing paper bin giving him no ideas to present to chan every time he came along to the younger’s studio. in dance practices, they snarled at him to be better, work harder and stop being a failure, resulting in more fumbles and slip-ups on jisung’s behalf, making the group have to rehearse longer hours and as a result of that, left them more aggravated and tired. every time he went to vocal or rap training, the voices hiss at him and tell him he’ll never compare to the other members rapping and vocal skills, leading him to make more mistakes and leave an annoyed coach. 

they made him believe he wasn’t good enough.

by the time they were about to have their comeback, the voices were louder than ever and jisung could never get a break from them and one evening, everything went spiralling out of control.

☆-☆-☆-☆-☆

“jisung what the heck man?! why are you not putting in as much effort as we are? do you not even care that we’re having our comeback next week and we’re failing because of you?!” hyunjin screams. jisung feels like he’s been stabbed.

“yeah ji, i’ve got to admit, you’ve been slacking off loads recently, what happened to you?” his ‘best friend’ felix says. his heart receives another wound. the members take it in turns to point out all of jisung’s faults and highlight them to everyone to hear.

“i want the old jisung back” - that comment hurt him the most. he missed his old self too. he missed being able to feel another emotion other than sadness or doubt. he missed feeling loved. after receiving all the wounds that his heart could possibly take, he darted out of the front room and found refuge in his room and locked the door.

nobody came to check on him that night.

at an ungodly hour in the morning, jisung crept to the bathroom and found the voices were becoming too much for him to handle that he opted to find a sweet release in an old friend: his razor blade. an object he had become familiar with at an early age due to his cousin being a cutter. his younger self, not knowing what his cousin was doing with it, ordered one online so that he could be just like his cool older cousin and didn’t have a use for it for the most part of his life. now he look the shiny blade out of the pocket it came sheathed in and smiled at it.

one cut won’t hurt, right?

he repeated that to himself over and over again to the point where he had long, open wounds littering his milky white thighs. he smiled to himself, finally feeling like he had regained control over himself.

☆-☆-☆-☆-☆

during promotion, with his new unhealthy coping mechanism, he felt himself become himself again as he could put on his stage persona and let it talk for itself, as if he had let it out of a locked cage. it possessed him and he even became stage jisung off camera; a nice change for the group and they didn’t think much of it, thinking that jisung had finally snapped out of his ‘lazy’ phase.

it was really just a mask for his emotions.

behind everything, jisung was still insecure. he still felt as if he didn’t belong and he thought that if he could play off his emotions for this promotion period, that was the last comeback he’d ever have to do with the group so that they could finally move ahead without jisung holding them back.

he readied his smile for when he walked into the dorms and looked at all the doors to the rooms; all were empty and open. strange.

he walked further down their corridor and what he saw tugged at his heart.

all of stray kids, huddled together on their l-shaped sofa that could never have held all of them, laughing and chatting amongst themselves as a movie played on the tv.

jisung was beyond hurt and it was bittersweet in a way because his members were having such a good time without him and didn’t even bother to call jisung up from his studio to join them, however that’s what they’d be like after he talked to jyp and left the group. they wouldn’t care, right? that’s what the voices told him and they also convinced him that he wouldn’t get half the sendoff they did for woojin.

‘that’s because woojin hyung worked harder’ the voices would tell him. he believed them.

as he fell back onto his bed, he wondered how far stray kids would get without him? if they’d ever get as much hype as their seniors did, if they’d get noticed more for how amazing they were. jisung loved his members with all his heart and never wanted to be the reason as to why his other members could fail, so he knew (or thought he knew) that taking himself out of the band’s equation would help them drastically.

he cut that evening, smaller lines painting themselves onto his thighs and his blood dripping onto the cold tile floor. he knew that he wasn’t good enough for the group and that’s why they were all together without him. he would make it through out the other end of promotions and he’d be gone. end of story.

it wasn’t until the last day of promotions where jisung got cornered by another one of his members.

minho specifically; his favourite hyung. his boyfriend. 

“hey ji, can we talk?” minho wore a sad smile. jisung looked confused.

“sure, why though?” he was genuinely confused as to why out of the blue his hyung was coming to him for something, anything.

“listen, i know it wasn’t any of my business to be looking and i’m really sorry for going through your stuff, but i needed to know why you were acting so… not like yourself for these past few months an-” minho was rambling and looked like he was on the verge of tears. jisung couldn’t properly comprehend what the older boy was saying so he paused him mid-sentence.

“whoa, slow down hyung! what is it?” jisung asks. the second minho’s answer leaves his mouth, the younger wishes he’d never asked.

“i found your resignation letter ji,” minho mumbled. jisung froze.

that wasn’t a part of the plan.

jisung felt himself fall into minho’s arms and become a weeping mess as his small frame shook violently from the harsh sobs which ripped their way out of his chest. minho was taken aback and to felt himself cry with the younger, feeling and seeing all of the pain and anguish the younger had been through in the last few months.

“shhhh, i-it’s ok. hy-yung’s got you,” minho hiccups through the tears.

jisung would get through this.

☆-☆-☆-☆-☆

fast forward to the present and jisung is finally feeling like himself again, albeit a bit quieter than he used to be because he was still in the process of opening back up to his members again, but felt more in place than he ever did before.

after minho had confronted jisung about his letter, the younger opened up to minho bit by bit until everything had come out; the voices, the self worth problems, the constant doubt, the cutting. minho listened intently to every word that came out of jisung’s mouth and nothing but praise was directed towards the younger as minho understood that opening up was a major challenge for him.

when he felt ready enough, he let minho speak for him and explain to the members as to why he’s been so off for the past few months. chan blamed himself for not noticing earlier. changbin was basically kicking himself. seungmin and jeongin instantly jumped up to hug jisung. felix was in tears for not caring for his best friend. hyunjin was also crying because of all of the negative things he said to jisung in this time period. jisung forgave all of them.

within days, jisung had been re-integrated back into the daily life of the dorm. whenever jisung was free, there was always a spare controller for him to game with the maknaes. whenever he needed some down time, he could always go to changbin or hyunjin to chill in their rooms and chat with them. whenever he wanted cuddles and comfort, a minho and chan sandwich was always open for jisung to squish himself inbetween.

he finally felt at home.


End file.
